Crewless cargo ships, operated by remote control, could be sailing our globe within the next decade says luxury engineering company Rolls-Royce. "The time is ripe for a fundamental change in shipping," insisted its vice-president of innovation, engineering and technology, Oskar Levander, while unveiling new concept boat designs. "Camera technology can be far superior than the human eye when it's dark, or foggy, or raining," he said, speaking from his office in Norway. Centuries after wooden boats with billowing sails and hundreds of crew navigated the world's trade routes, could we soon see 10 captains operating 100 ships by remote control, as imagined by Levander? "If you go back in history, maybe 150 years back, a normal cargo vessel had about 250 crew. And it's been reducing ever since -- now we are down to 12 or 15," he said. "And the question is why would it stop now?" "If you look at the captain today, he is highly trained, and he's been educated on how to operate the ship in difficult situations, and maneuvering in ports, and so on. But what does he really do? It's probably less than 5% of his time that he's spending on really maneuvering the ship. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/sport/rolls-royce-robo-ships/index.html?hpt=hp_t4 They would also be able to haul more cargo without space put aside for personnel. Just wanted to point out that once again, its not just the guys flipping burgers who should be worried about the future of automation.
Automation is eventually going to risk EVERYONE's job. I expect within 10-20 years we'll see self-driving cars and trucks, eliminating anyone who gets paid to drive. Maybe not within our lifetimes, but eventually robotics will be so advanced, and physically indistinguishable from humans, and willing to work 24x7x365 without even so much as a bathroom break. I expect eventually computers and nano-tech will takeover healthcare. 3D printer technology will allow you to print an iPhone 17 at home out of $4.75 in raw materials. We are approaching a day where human labor will be unncessary. I don't know how that's going to work, but it's inevitable.
Hmmm.... I'm worried about the qualifications these captains would have if they're not getting as much experience in piloting ships.
A lot of this stuff makes no sense. Is a home 3d printer going to melt silicon for processors? Post-peak oil, will building, maintaining and powering a human-looking robot be cheaper than hiring a human? How will the miniaturization be done? There's a lot of unanswered questions and material concerns that don't get addressed when people start talking like this. They just extrapolate from where we are now without considering any details and as if that wasn't bad enough, they sometimes base their political opinions off of their estimates.
Most looking at the future post 2050 are not confined to the current logic of using the same materials, processor's, or power sources we use today. I know thats pretty much counting on whats seems science fiction but even in the distant past lets say 1950 some ideas that are common today would have seems far fetched until breakthroughs in the materials, and computing industry made them possible. Ideas for power sources seem to be hindered by the ease and efficiency we have with oil, but they are out there and continue slowly crawling along. It may also be cheaper to use humans for a period for the reasons you put forth, but in "the end game" lots of capital will be put forth by industry, developers, world militaries and executives to develop a way around that. People cost almost more in insurance, retirement, ect ect than they do to pay them to work per month/hr. Also think of the non life aspect with more dangerous jobs, its sure would be a lot easier to call a manufacturer and tell him there was an accident, your robot thing sucks fix it than it would to call someone family and tell them their loved on is dead, please settle with us out of court.
Well, I didn't mention insurance or retirement Such things will probably disappear due to such pressures and more people will have to make do for themselves.
Automation is only as good as the people who program it. Even with automation they'd probably have to staff it; airplanes which are highly automated have crews just in case an issue crops up. Plus hijackers would have a field day if a ship was completely unattended when you think about it, so I think you'll always have some sort of minimal staffing.
it's a LOOOOOONG time off. do you want the next oil spill because the old man was drunk in his cabin or because of tin whiskers?
